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Ecology
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What is a population? | Members of the same species living in the same area (e.g., all lemurs in a rainforest) |
| What is a community? | A group of populations living in the same area (e.g., all lemurs, tigers, birds, and plants in a rainforest) |
| What is an ecosystem? | An area where organisms in a community interact with their physical environment (e.g., oceans, ponds, rainforests) |
| What is the biosphere? | All regions of earth containing living things (e.g., atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere) |
| What is a habitat? | The type of place where an organism usually lives, including other organisms and the physical/chemical environment |
| What is the order of ecological organization from smallest to largest? | Individual → Population → Community → Ecosystem → Biosphere |
| What is a Type I survivorship curve? | Most individuals survive to middle age and die more quickly after that (e.g., humans) |
| What is a Type II survivorship curve? | Length of survivorship is random; death rate is constant across all ages |
| What is a Type III survivorship curve? | Most individuals die young; few survive to reproductive age and beyond (e.g., fish, insects) |
| What is the competitive exclusion principle? | When two species compete for the same resources or occupy the same niche, one will be more successful and the other will be eliminated |
| What is a predator? | An organism that kills and eats another |
| What is a parasite? | An organism that spends most of its life living on a host and consuming nutrients from it |
| What is a herbivore? | An organism that eats plants; herbivores have developed long intestinal tracts to fully absorb nutrients |
| What is a niche? | The set of conditions and resources an organism needs plus all interactions it has with other species |
| What is a fundamental niche? | The niche an organism occupies when no competing species are present |
| What is a realized niche? | The smaller subset of the niche a species actually occupies when competition is present |
| What is competition? | An interaction between organisms that occurs when resources are limited and multiple organisms require the same limited resources |
| What is symbiosis? | Any interaction between two species |
| What is mutualism? | Both organisms benefit (+/+). Examples: nitrogen-fixing bacteria and legumes; bees pollinating flowers |
| What is commensalism? | One organism benefits, the other is unaffected (+/o). Examples: remora and shark; whale and barnacle |
| What is parasitism? | One organism benefits at the expense of the host (+/-). Examples: virus and host cell (all viruses are parasites); ticks feeding on cats |
| What is ecological/trophic efficiency? | The proportion of energy at one trophic level that is transferred to the next; on average about 10%, with 90% lost to metabolism, heat, and detritivores |
| Where is energy/biomass/organism quantity highest and lowest in a food chain? | Highest at the primary producer level; lowest at the tertiary/quaternary consumer level |
| What are primary producers? | Autotrophs that convert sunlight into chemical energy (e.g., plants, cyanobacteria) |
| What are primary consumers? | Herbivores that eat primary producers |
| What are secondary consumers? | Primary carnivores that eat primary consumers |
| What are tertiary consumers? | Secondary carnivores that eat secondary consumers |
| What are detritivores? | Consumers that obtain energy by consuming detritus (dead matter including leaves, animal remains, and waste products) |
| What characterizes a tropical rainforest? | High temperature and humidity, heavy rainfall; the most diverse biome |
| What characterizes a savanna? | Tropical grasslands with scattered trees; very little precipitation, seasonal drought and fires; found in Australia and Africa |
| What characterizes temperate grasslands? | Uneven seasonal precipitation, fertile soils, seasonal drought and fires; North American prairie; large mammals grazing |
| What characterizes deserts? | Most extreme temperature fluctuations |
| What characterizes chaparral? | Along the California coastline; wet winters, dry summers, scattered vegetation |
| What characterizes taigas? | Long cold winters; low precipitation in the form of heavy snow; the largest terrestrial biome |
| What characterizes temperate coniferous forests? | Cold forests; vegetation evolved to conserve water |
| What characterizes tundras? | Cold winters with permafrost; minimal vegetation (moss, lichen, grasses); low precipitation and low temperature |
| What characterizes temperate deciduous forests? | Warm summers, cold winters, moderate precipitation; large deciduous trees shed leaves in winter; vertical stratification; principal mammals hibernate through winter |
| What does the nitrogen cycle describe? | How nitrogen moves from the environment to living organisms and back into the environment |
| What is nitrogen fixation? | The conversion of nitrogen from its environmental form (N₂) into a form usable by organisms; carried out by nitrogen-fixing bacteria found in the root nodules of legumes |
| What is denitrification? | The conversion of nitrogen from the form used by organisms back into the environmental form (N₂) |
| What is succession? | A change in the composition of an ecological community over time |
| What is primary succession? | Succession that occurs on substrates that never previously supported living things (e.g., lichen growing on a bare rock) |
| What is secondary succession? | Succession that occurs where a community was entirely or partially destroyed by a damaging event (e.g., forest regrowing after a wildfire) |
| What are pioneer species? | The first species to colonize a newly exposed habitat; they are opportunistic, tolerate harsh conditions, grow fast, and produce offspring rapidly |
| What is biological magnification? | The process by which toxins become more concentrated at higher trophic levels as one organism eats another |
| What is eutrophication? | A process where water becomes enriched with excess nutrients → biomass increases → algal blooms deplete oxygen → detritivorous bacteria deplete even more O₂ → many animals die of oxygen starvation |
Created by:
smurtab